The ongoing indigenous uprising in Ontario perculates up into the New York Times, Aug. 17. The Times gets a B for at least including some historical context, but a failing grade for consistency, having largely ignored this crisis for months,… Read moreNew York Times notes Iroquois land struggle —at last
Former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), top officials in the government of current Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada and a leader of Fox’s center-right National Action Party (PAN) were involved in a conspiracy in 2004 to remove Andres… Read moreMexico: pre-election plot confirmed?
The 9,500 workers at Volkswagen’s giant plant in the state of Puebla went on strike Aug. 18 after rejecting the company’s offer of a 4.5% pay raise coupled with demands for increased “labor flexibility.” Talks remained stalled on Aug. 19,… Read moreMexico: labor struggles escalate
Some 60 masked and mostly armed men, including “porros” (provocaterus) and municipal police, took over the local office of the Oaxaca daily newspaper Noticias in the town of Santa Cruz Amilpas Aug. 20. The municipal government is in the hands… Read moreOaxaca: general strike, paramilitary backlash
From AP via the Houston Chronicle, Aug. 21: Volunteers plan to man Texas border SAN ANTONIO — Hundreds of volunteers plan to keep watch over the Texas-Mexico border near Laredo beginning Sept. 11, aiding the U.S. Border Patrol’s effort to… Read moreVigilantes plan 9-11 border mobilization
From New Jersey’s Herald News, Aug. 16, also online at DeleteTheBorder.org: Detainee report ‘too damning’ to release? Nearly eight months after the Department of Homeland Security said it would issue the first official report on the treatment of immigrants in… Read moreHomeland Security detainee report “too damning” to release?
On Aug. 15, at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, immigrant activist Elvira Arellano told supporters she would not report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office that day for deportation, as she had been… Read moreChicago deportation resister seeks church sanctuary
Sometimes you have to look at your opponent’s propaganda to get a realistic sense of your own side’s weaknesses—call it an inoculation against groupthink. A case in point is this Aug. 21 analysis of the recent court ruling on the… Read moreRuling in surveillance scandal headed for overturn?
Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a supposed Hezbollah stronhold in the Bekaa Valley Aug. 20 in what Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called a “naked violation” of the UN-backed truce. Three Hezbollah guerrillas were reportedly killed in a dawn firefight with… Read moreFighting in Bekaa Valley—despite Lebanon ceasefire
Hard to say if this is more bizarre or terrifying. Talk about the banality of evil. What about the evil of banality? From Reuters, Aug. 21: MUMBAI, India – A new restaurant in India’s financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler… Read moreIndia’s Jews protest Hitler-themed restaurant
India’s pro-secular website “Citizens for Justice and Peace” carries the following story on a July 27 fatwa jointly issued by a Muslim mufti (revered scholar) and a Hindu mahant (temple leader) in response to the Mumbai bombings. Chief Mufti issues… Read moreIndia: Muslim moderates declare jihad on terrorism
The growing repression in China against peasants struggling to keep their lands before the onslaught of “development”—and now against their lawyers—is clearly analogous to peasant struggles raging throughout Latin America. Note the reference to forced sterilizations of peasants in the… Read moreChina detains lawyers for peasant advocate
